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This paper aims to examine the influence of religious backgrounds and religiosity on three dimensions of household finance (the decision to hold secured debt, the likelihood of being in a state of financial distress and the likelihood of being in a state of financial well-being) across a large sample of European countries.

The study uses data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data set, spanning from 2004 to 2018. The authors conduct regression analysis to examine the relationship between religion and household financial choices.

The study finds that belonging to a predominantly Catholic or Orthodox (Protestant) country is negatively (positively) associated with the likelihood of holding a mortgage. Belonging to a mostly Catholic (Protestant) country is negatively (positively) associated with the likelihood of being in a state of financial distress. Belonging to a predominantly Catholic (Protestant) country is positively (negatively) associated with the likelihood of being in a state of financial well-being. These relationships remain robust after controlling for a large number of demographic and economic variables.

In this paper, the authors analyze for the first time the impact of religion on household finance in a wide range of European countries. It is also the first time that the EU-SILC database, which aggregates data on more than three million European households, is used for the study of this topic.

This paper aims to investigate whether religiosity and religious diversity affect the adoption of sustainability reporting assurance (SRA) by companies based in predominantly Roman Catholic and Protestant countries. To this aim, a theoretical framework is developed using the social norm, signalling and agency theories.

A pooled logit regression model is applied on a sample of 2,541 firm-year observations collected from the most sustainable companies in Europe in the period between 2004 and 2015 to test the effect of religiosity on SRA adoption. Different analyses are used to check for the robustness of the findings and a generalized method of moments (GMM) is used to address potential endogeneity issues.

The results of this study show that companies based in highly religious countries are more likely to adopt SRA practices to show compliance with the religious social norms of their stakeholders. The results also show that companies based in predominantly Roman Catholic countries are more likely to adopt SRA practices than those operating in Protestant countries. This may be due to the fact that the structural organization of Catholicism is based on a vertical, top-down control system, which does not foster trust and requires constant assurance. This explains the emphasis placed on SRA by stakeholders adhering to Catholicism. Stakeholders from Protestant countries, on the other hand, tend to rely more on the principles of social ethics and social mutual control that characterize their doctrine and, therefore, do not need any additional, external assurance of corporate commitment to sustainability.

This paper provides new insights into the influence that religiosity and religious diversity have on SRA. This study also provides evidence on the usefulness of social norm theory for conducting empirical research into corporate practices and could set an example for future studies in this field.

Having good relationships with friends and a trusting romantic partnership are extremely important for members of Generation Z. In social relationships with other young people, they experience solidarity and support with problems and crises, and learn to stand by others. Young people are therefore intensely concerned with how to enter into relationships and their expectations of them. Overwhelmingly, what they are looking for in friendships is similar across cultures – a set of shared values and similar hobbies. For romantic relationships, though, shared values and close proximity are key.

This paper aims to offer a new history of management by tracing a religious dimension of scientific management. The thesis is that the good was foundational for bringing scientific management to success in Taylor’s native Quaker Philadelphia in the 1880s. The paper’s main contribution is to contrast the philosophical origins of Taylor’s ideas in scientific management to his native Quaker roots, and how Taylor, over time, into the 1910s, wrestled with this issue.

The paper is situated in historical interpretivism and subjectivism, leaning on contextual and narrative research on religious morality.

Quaker morality prevented managerial opportunism at Taylor’s Midvale Steel in the 1880s. Conversely, by the 1900s and 1910s, interest conflicts between workers and managers escalated when scientific management moved out of its traditional cultural contexts of Quaker Philadelphia and spread across the USA. The historical implication is, already for Taylor’s time, that scientific management never was the “one-best way” of management.

Future research needs to deepen and broaden research on scientific management when tracing the significance of religion and culture in management thought.

The paper has implications for modern studies of business morality by uncovering the practical relevance of religious business ethics at the outset of management studies.

The historic emergence of scientific management points to a theory of institutional evolution and economic growth, when religiously grounded governance of the firm deinstitutionalized, and institutional economic governance, with different but superior economic advantages, progressed by the 1900s.

The paper suggests an alternative version of the intellectual heritage of management studies by tracing the legacy of Taylor’s Quakerism and how religious and cultural ideas contributed to the formation of science in management.

Immigration-themed children’s literature can be an important resource in the classroom, especially because some U.S. immigrant groups, including French-Canadians, have received limited curricular representation. Using the qualitative method of critical content analysis, this study aims to examine depictions of French-Canadian immigrants to the United States in contemporary children’s books.

Postcolonialism is employed as an analytical lens with special attention given to the ways immigrant characters are constructed as different from the dominant group (i.e., othering), how dominant group values are imposed on immigrant characters, and how immigrant characters resist othering and domination. Three books comprise the sample: “Charlotte Bakeman Has Her Say” by Mary Finger and illustrated by Kimberly Batti, “Other Bells for Us to Ring” by Robert Cormier, and “Red River Girl” by Norma Sommerdorf.

The findings reveal multiple instances in which French-Canadian immigrants are constructed as Other and few instances in which these characters resist this positioning, and these books reflect the real ways French-Canadians were perceived as subalterns during the mass migration from Québec to the United States between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This study is significant because it examines portrayals of a substantial immigrant group that has been overlooked in the immigration history curriculum. This sample of children’s books may be used to teach children the complexities of immigration history and provide a more nuanced understanding of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Case Valdesi (Waldensian Houses) are non-profit structures, managed by the Diaconia Valdese, that propose a value-based and value-driven model of hospitality. There are nine hospitality facilities (six guest houses, two hotels and one hostel) located in different Italian venues, open to individual travellers, families or groups who look for unconventional tourism experiences such as slow-paced visits to artistic and natural attractions, retreats, informal symposia, as well as creative projects. The guest houses welcome international students and volunteers who provide hospitality services. They host refugees and asylum seekers when needed and encourage connections and mutual exchanges among people with diverse life experiences. Moreover, they use the hospitality revenues to support educational and social welfare projects. This chapter will present the Waldensian model of hospitality through a case study based on observations and qualitative data collected during fieldwork, proposing it as one of the possible sources of inspiration for the creation of human destinations.

The USA has long been known to provide a competitive environment in which religions compete for believers. The data clearly show winners and losers in this marketplace. Major Christian denominations are generally experiencing a decline in membership while religious “nones” are growing in number. Of note, the recent Pew studies of the US Religious Landscape (2008 and 2015a) indicate that measures of spirituality are rising in this environment. This paper empirically investigates how the demand for spirituality in religion may better understand these trends.

This paper applies ordinary least squares to survey data from the 2015 Pew study to empirically investigate how belonging to a major Christian faith and attending religious services impacts feeling of spirituality, while conditioning on a host of other demographic variables, in order to better understand these trends.

The author finds that being a member of a Christian denomination generally reduces the measure of spirituality relative to religious “nones.” However, this effect is almost always offset by a measure of attendance at religious services suggesting spirituality is positively associated with social interaction.

The results have implications for religious leaders concerned about maintaining and growing the church's membership. The results suggest that Church leaders may benefit from de-emphasizing hierarchical top-down rules and emphasizing community.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-05-2022-0342

This paper aims to trace the development of Hong Kong's Happy Valley from a space associated with dangerous miasmas to the site of a racecourse, recreation ground and a series of cemeteries for the colony's foreign communities while examining the relationship between the exclusion of Chinese from Happy Valley and the notion of colonial order.

This paper makes use of empirical evidence from historical documents, such as newspapers and government records, and applies Michel Foucault's notion of the heterotopia as a theoretical model.

This paper provides insights into the relationship between space and power in the colonial setting. It demonstrates that the imposition of colonial order in Happy Valley was a process that involved the exclusion of Chinese and that the various ways in which this order was reinforced, contested and negotiated revealed it to be shallow and incomplete.

This paper sheds light on an underexamined but important colonial space in 19th and early 20th century Hong Kong and complicates the notion of colonial control.

An understanding of the deep, intertwined roots of faith, family, nationalism, and capitalism within the United States is essential as we stand at the precipice of unprecedented global crises – climate change, economic inequality, and violence. Being raised in a devout, Evangelical Christian household provided unique insight into the political and cultural landscape of the Appalachian coal fields, where my extended family – who face persistent poverty, environmental pollution, and nonexistent support services – only expect relief from the crucible of life through death. Reflecting on the longstanding influence of the Protestant ethic (Weber, 2001/1930) and the consequences of widespread austerity-based policies (Piketty, 2014), I trace my experiences as being an insider/outsider within rural Appalachia and academia as a microcosm of the world that lies ahead, where global crises come home and local crises become planetary. Strategies to address impending global challenges demand analysis and action which extends beyond nations and national interests toward a planetary-level analysis. Specifically, planetary sociology brings a sociological analysis of the nuance and complexity of the “political, economic, organizational, and social” worlds into analysis with the, often ignored, natural worlds (Dahms, 2017). Thus, reflecting on the interconnected and interdependent levels of analysis – personal, familial, communal, national, and global – through the power of personal narratives serve as a beginning of planetary solutions.